All the Money in the World by Robert Anthony Siegel
James Alan McPherson recommends All the Money in the World, a novel by Robert Anthony Siegel: “A heartfelt first novel by a gifted former student.” (Random)
Review
The New Life by Richard Tillinghast
Richard Tillinghast, The New Life, poems: In his latest collection, which takes its title from Dante’s celebration of courtly love, La Vita Nuova, Tillinghast journeys through romantic love, the deaths of old friends, the ironies of history, and the losses and epiphanies of a long life of exploration and discovery. (Copper Beech)
Usher by B. H. Fairchild
B. H. Fairchild, Usher, poems: This new collection of poems employs dramatic monologues and embraces a range of subject matters and modes, from the elegiac to the comic. (Norton)
Rev: Clampdown
Clampdown, by Jennifer Moxley (Flood Editions): A few decades ago Jennifer Moxley might have been called a “coterie poet”—her low celebrity wattage within the larger galaxy of American letters contrasts starkly with the deep respect and loyalty she inspires among a relatively small number of serious readers and fellow poets. Her work appears in hard-to-find…
All-American Girl by Robin Becker
Lloyd Schwartz recommends All-American Girl, poems by Robin Becker: “Unsparing and self-knowing, Robin Becker uses irony (as in her double- and triple-edged title) as if it were a form of directness. Painful, often devastating poems contend with crushing loss, the convolutions of sexuality and family politics, the struggle to accept the self. Yet they also…
Selected Poems by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott, Selected Poems, poems: Drawing from every stage of Walcott’s Nobel Prize-winning career, this collection brings together his famous early works, passages from Omeros , and selections from his latest major works. (FSG)
The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman, The Story Sisters, a novel: Hoffman’s latest book tells of sisters who create their own magical world to escape a tragic encounter that has forever changed their lives. (Areheart)
Review: Selected Poems by Mary Ruefle
In his essay “Recognition, Vertigo, and Passionate Worldliness,” Tony Hoagland makes sense of current divisions among poets writing in the U.S. today by dividing them into camps that go to poetry either for some sort of perspective on experience—to feel a cathartic “gong of recognition”—or to untangle their sleepy mammal selves from the probable, humdrum,…
Fables of the Self by Rosanna Warren
Rosanna Warren, Fables of the Self, essays: Emerging from the tradition of British and American poet-critics, Warren traces the idea of imagined selfhood through time and space, creating an occult autobiography that shows the imagination as a transfiguring and potentially moral force. (Norton)